Acquisitions
ARTIST ROOMS: The d'Offay Donation
Gilbert & George (born 1943, born 1942)
Two rooms comprising nine works: an early magazine sculpture, George the Cunt and Gilbert the Shit, 1970; Crusade, 1980; Fallen Leaves, 1980; Thirst, 1982; Hunger, 1982; Existers,1984, Family Tree, 1991; Light Headed, 1991; Faith Drop, 1991.
Gilbert & George have been important figures in the international art world since 1970. Working as a pair and presenting themselves as ‘living sculpture’, incorporating themselves and their lives into their art, they set out to provoke their viewers, to make them think and question conventions and taboos. In the key 1970 magazine sculpture included in The d’Offay Donation they are smiling up at the viewer with cut-out letters pinned to their chests, which read ‘George the Cunt’ and 'Gilbert the Shit’ respectively. Their early work emphasised the artists’ own image, their place as misfits in society and their concept of ‘art for all’. But by the late 1970s they had moved beyond the enclosed spaces of their house, their drinking and their life as artists, to explore the world and the people around them in the East End of London. The ‘Dirty Words’ series focused on graffiti photographed in the streets of the city. Gilbert & George were now not just taking art to the people but incorporating the people into their art. At the same time they declared their purpose was to find and accept all that was good and bad in themselves. The large multi-part brightly coloured works from the 1980s in The d’Offay Donation come mainly from this period of huge energy and change, when Gilbert & George were also developing new and specifically modern techniques of photography and printing to make their art appropriate to the people with and for whom it was made. Throughout the decade they also exhibited their work around the world in a highly modern way, masses of huge brightly coloured images made from glazed panels arranged and hung according to their precise instructions.
CRUSADE 1980
Mixed media
2420 x 2020 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Gilbert & George
EXISTERS 1984
Mixed media
2420 x 3535 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Gilbert & George
Artists
- Diane Arbus
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- Georg Baselitz
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- Joseph Beuys
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- Vija Celmins
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- Ellen Gallagher
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- Gilbert & George
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- Johan Grimonprez
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- Richard Hamilton
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- Ian Hamilton Finlay
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- Damien Hirst
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- Jenny Holzer
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- Alex Katz
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- Anselm Kiefer
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- Jeff Koons
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- Jannis Kounellis
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- Sol LeWitt
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- Richard Long
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- Robert Mapplethorpe
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- Agnes Martin
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- Mario Merz
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- Ron Mueck
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- Bruce Nauman
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- Charles Ray
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- Gerhard Richter
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- Ed Ruscha
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- Robert Ryman
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- Robert Therrien
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- Cy Twombly
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- Bill Viola
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- Andy Warhol
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- Lawrence Weiner
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- Francesca Woodman
